Would you believe I have 150,000 followers on Twitter? A lot of them are just hate-following me, but still, it’s a large crowd.

I’m abandoning them now. I’ve made my last post on that hellsite.

Elon Musk has promoted so much garbage that I can no longer in good conscience use the social media site. It’s just vile, and the final straw that broke my interest was the raging anti-semitism that’s flourishing there.

Elon Musk is an impressive business guy. In the space of a year, he turned Xwitter from a sometimes-annoying but vital source of information and community-building into an antisemitic dumpster fire in the middle of a racist tire fire atop a shit-encrusted mountain of misinformation and conspiracy theories — all while losing money at it, too.

Wednesday night, the techno wunderscheißhaufen poured gasoline on one of those fires, boosting a vile antisemitic tweet that echoed the deadly rhetoric behind multiple mass shootings by white supremacists. But he later said he didn’t mean to do antisemitism to all Jews, just the ADL and a lot of others, so no harm, no foul stench, and advertisers will surely not be further put off spending money at Xwitter, right?

Here’s another take.

“You have said the actual truth” was Musk’s Wednesday night response to a paid X Premium user who, in explaining why “Hitler was right,” accused Jewish communities in the U.S. of “dialectical hatred against whites” and blamed them for “flooding their country” with “hordes of minorities.” Musk went on to clarify that he was not talking about all Jews, just the Anti-Defamation League (which has criticized Musk for white nationalist content on his platform) and unnamed others he claimed were “unjustly” focusing on “the majority of the West” rather than “the minority groups who are their primary threat.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, all of it bad. Musk is promoting the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, as many have noted. That blood-soaked fantasy was touted by tiki torchbearers chanting “Jews will not replace us” and echoed by several murderous white supremacists, including the terrorist who massacred Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue, even as it spread through Fox News and the right-wing media and became a fixture of GOP politics. And unlike others who have adopted a less explicit version of the theory, Musk is, in the parlance of the white nationalists who applauded his remark, explicitly “naming the Jew” as the source of the problem.

Enough, enough, enough. Fuck that guy, and fuck his company.

Anyone who wants to follow me on social media can find me here:

https://octodon.social/@pzmyers (@pzmyers@octodon.social)
https://bsky.app/profile/pzmyers.bsky.social (@pzmyers.bsky.social)

And if you don’t care about social media, that’s fine, I’ll also be right here.

It’s out of control. It’s insane. Look at this story out of Texas:

The concept of the college football coaching buyout reached its historical apex Sunday, when news broke that Texas A&M would dismiss Jimbo Fisher amid his sixth season as head coach. That dismissal would figure to entail the school and its boosters paying Fisher the remainder of his contract, which infamously totals around $76 million.

$76 million. What’s worse, they’re paying one man $76 million to stop working so they can hire someone else for an equivalent salary…a single salary that could instead have paid for over 700 full professors in real academic disciplines to work. And this is one guy! Imagine how much money is getting thrown down the rathole of recruiting and bloated coaching staffs and taking the players out for steak dinners every night. This is madness. This is college football.

This Jimbo Fisher guy never deserved that kind of extravagant salary, and even had a winning 6:4 season so far. You know what happened here: some absurdly rich asshole donor started complaining that “his” team wasn’t winning enough, and decided to meddle, so he could pretend to take credit when some young kid throws a touchdown pass.

This is no way to run a university.

The students don’t even notice because they’re all distracted by these phony rivalries. All they know is that to defend their honor their football team has to defeat some other football team in Texas, or Nebraska, or whereever. No, kids, that doesn’t matter.

I had to finish grading an exam for one class, and compose an exam for another class, which will soon bounce back demanding that I grade it. Also, this week is dedicated to advising, so I’ve had a stream of students coming to my office for assistance in getting ready for spring term. That’s been a real roller coaster: some students are sailing through, excelling at their courses, so we have to talk about what gets them excited, while other students are struggling, so we have to talk about what to do to get back on track and just plain survive. I’m starting to feel drained.

I mentioned that I’m not getting a sabbatical next year (but definitely will in 2025), so I’ve been working with the discipline to revise my schedule. There’s some happy news there: this spring I’ll be teaching ecological developmental biology, and then, in the fall, Developmental Biology! I am floored! For the first time in way too many years, I’ll be teaching courses in my specialty, and I’ll be doing it over two consecutive semesters! It almost makes up for not getting a sabbatical. Almost.

Now I have to get back to the student train — I have another scheduled appointment in 5 minutes, and then my cell bio class.

It’s far too busy, racist, and ugly. The state is currently accepting submissions for redesigns, and you can view all 2,123 online. Yikes.

As you might predict, there are a fair number of joke submissions, a lot of ugly flags (but none as ugly as the original), and many that are just trying too hard. So I’m gonna make it simple for you all. This should be the new flag, entry #408:

It’s original. It’s simple. It’s beautiful. It’s appropriate to our state. And best of all, it will strike terror in the hearts of our neighbors, which is what you always want in a flag.

OK, I have to add another grievance to the pile. We’re getting ready for spring semester registration, and our students are expected to meet with their advisors in the next few days, so I’ve got appointments stacking up — but that’s not the grievance. I like that we require students to get regular advising sessions, rather than suddenly having deficiencies show up as they’re trying to graduate.

The problem is that all student records are now computerized (I remember when we’d have file folders full of pieces of paper, instead). Preparing for an advising meeting involves going to a link on the university website, which is supposed to give us all the relevant student records. This is what I see when I go through the prescribed channels:

System data is currently unavailable. Some content may not be available at this time.

I’ve got requests from students to enroll in some of my courses, and I was trying to get the necessary permission codes to send them so they could do that. All weekend long, all I saw was

System data is currently unavailable. Some content may not be available at this time.

I’ve got three students scheduled for advising meetings this morning, and like a responsible advisor I go to look up their academic records, and what do I see?

System data is currently unavailable. Some content may not be available at this time.

This is a centralized service provided by the entire great big University of Minnesota system, and it fucking doesn’t work. We’ve got a database we need to do our job, and we are constantly locked out of it.

It’s so hard to be angry with them when they’re doing such a good job of picking their targets.

Killer whales have sunk yet another boat in southwestern Europe, marking the fourth such incident in the region in the last two years.

The latest attack saw a pod of orcas target a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar for about 45 minutes, Polish cruise company Morskie Mile said in a Facebook post on 31 October.

The boat’s operator said the relentless attack focused on the yacht’s steering fin and caused extensive damage and leakage.

“Despite attempts to bring the yacht to the port by the captain, crew and rescuers from the SAR (Search and Rescue), port tugs and the Moroccan Navy, the unit sunk near the entrance to the port of Tanger Med,” the company said, while adding that the crew was “safe, unharmed, and sound”.

That’s how you do it. Hit privileged people in the pocketbook without actually killing or hurting them physically, and we’ll cheer you on. If only humans were smart enough to realize that!

We have wild turkeys here in Morris — we see them every once in a while, along the road or at the horticulture garden. They tend to be timid and run away if you approach.

It’s a different story in New Jersey.

Roaming the highways of West Orange is a mighty bird named Turkules, who boldly charges across the road, pursues pedestrians, and has so far proven unstoppable.

Turkules made his official debut early in October at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation on Pleasant Valley Way. Like a bad “why did the chicken cross the road joke,” residents saw him in the street when they were driving in the area. His antics have been immortalized in the New York Times and one resident said he was featured in The Times of India.

People posted pictures of him and captivated residents reported his every movement. One day he was spotted with a dart in his chest from an official capture attempt, and another time he was hit by a car. No one posted any Turkules sightings for a few days, and his fan club worried about his wellbeing. On Tuesday, Oct. 31 he reappeared, much to the delight of many township residents. Although, not everyone is convinced that the turkey spotted on Halloween was Turkules.

He has been creating traffic problems, and many on social media are worried that he will be hit again. Turkules has also charged at a couple of people, so don’t get too close to him.

Officials have posted official warnings.

Please be advised the Township of West Orange is aware of the wild turkey present on Pleasant Valley Way, in the area of Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation and Daughters of Israel. West Orange Animal Control has been working with New Jersey Fish & Wildlife for the past two weeks to capture and relocate this turkey. It’s crucial that the public refrains from approaching the wild turkey for safety reasons. Wild animals can become stressed or agitated when approached, which can pose risks to both the animal and humans. Feeding the turkey or attempting to remove tranquilizing darts is strongly discouraged. Interfering with the wildlife professionals’ efforts can complicate the situation and potentially harm the turkey. New Jersey Fish and Wildlife authorities are actively working to capture and relocate the turkey. They have been trying to tranquilize the bird, but have encountered some challenges in their efforts so far.

You go, Turkules (he has many names now: Cluck Norris, Gobbles McFeathers, Wingston, or simply Tom). Lead the rebellion. Raise up your armies and storm the citadels of Butterball, Jennie-O, and Perdue. Know this: you have allies among us vegetarian humans.

I, for one, welcome our new turkey overlords. They can’t be worse than the turkeys running the country right now.

This is often a terrible mistake.

OK, I’ll play along. Ten year old people don’t have the experience to make an informed decision, parents have an obligation to protect their children from the depradations of rich old creeps, it doesn’t matter whether I’m male or female, and Richard Hanania is a gross scumbag who ought to be watched carefully.

Isn’t it nice that he bought a blue checkmark from that other creepy fuck, Elon Musk?